Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(80)

If she let herself think about this too much, she would pull away. She would get afraid, and she would stop.

And she wasn’t going to let herself do that.





CHAPTER TWENTY


HE HADN’T RUN into Callie at all when he was out working that morning. It was strange, but not entirely unusual. They hadn’t seen each other at all that first day, either. But this time, he had looked for her a few times, and hadn’t found her in any of the places where there were tasks to do, so he wasn’t really sure what she had found to busy herself with.

He had gone and checked the corral, and she wasn’t there. But it was late, and he was hungry, and he was about to go inside and open up a beer and get a TV dinner out of the freezer.

She could join him if she wanted to. Maybe she was off at a bar finding a man to pick up.

He gritted his teeth against the anger that thought produced inside of him.

She’d better not be doing that.

And then what? If she were? What would he do?

Yeah, he didn’t really know. Because he had waived his right to be in her face about that, he expected. When he had acted like nothing had happened between them while they were at her parents’ ranch.

But it was for the best.

Yeah, maybe they had talked about it, but things had gotten too heated, too real, back there and they needed time to cool down.

Soon enough, this whole marriage thing would be over. And he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. He walked up the steps into the house, and was immediately surprised by the smell coming from the kitchen.

It was food.

He frowned, making his way toward the smell, and the sounds that went along with it. Clattering and banging. When he walked in, there was a pot sitting on the stove with steam billowing out of the top of it, and Callie was standing in front of a skillet, red-faced.

“Cal?”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”

She looked at something on the counter, and then grabbed the pot, taking it over to the sink and dumping the water out, and some pasta along with it. He presumed there was a colander down there to catch it, otherwise she was throwing out a whole lot of food.

“I cooked,” she said.

She picked up the colander in the sink—as expected—and dumped the noodles back into the pot. Then she picked the skillet up off the stove and dumped something looking like red sauce into the pan after the noodles.

“I had to do a little bit of research.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I figured out how to make spaghetti.”

He held back a smile. Even he could make spaghetti.

“Well, that’s an achievement.”

“Thanks,” she said. She looked genuinely proud, and it warmed him.

Why exactly are you letting it warm you, asshole?

The moment splintered. He didn’t know what he was doing, standing there, with this woman cooking him dinner. He didn’t know what she was doing.

“Well, we both have to eat.”

And that simple declaration saw him pushing aside his concerns. She was right. They both had to eat. And this was infinitely better than a freezer dinner.

“True,” he said.

“Grab some plates,” she said. “I’ll bring the pot into the dining room.”

He did as instructed, getting a beer, some plates and forks, and following her into the dining area. There was a bowl of salad sitting on the table, with two forks shoved into it. And there was a bottle of ranch dressing sitting beside it.

“Thanks,” he said. “This is way better than what I had planned.”

She twisted her hands together. “You’re welcome.”

And then he sat. And it was just nice. To have this done for him after such a long day. She sat across from him, holding her own beer. And she watched as he served himself, taking a heaping helping of spaghetti and putting it on the plate. He’d eaten meals with Callie countless times, but there was something different about this. Something different about her having prepared the food for him. Warmth spread in his chest, but at the same time, so did the discomfort.

They ate in silence, and he enjoyed it, and then she popped up and went back into the kitchen. “I have something else.”

She came back, and returned with a plate of sugar cookies.

Sugar cookies. The crunchy kind.

Just like they’d talked about at the ranch when she had discussed making cookies with her mom.

“What’s that?”

“I hope you don’t mind, but I got the recipe from Iris. She said that she had it. The one that your mom used to make. I know that I’m stepping all over emotional stuff,” she said. “But I wanted to do something for you. I wanted to do this for you. I... You take care of me, Jake. You’ve done so much for me, and I just really wanted to do something for you, too.”

All he could do was stare at her. And then down at the cookies. And he couldn’t... He couldn’t for the life of him understand why she was doing this for him. Why anyone would do anything for him. And he was so damn stymied by the cookies that he couldn’t really focus on much of anything else. Because he just couldn’t make sense of it. Not heads nor tails.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

“I wanted to,” she said. “Jake... You have been there for me for the last eight years. You are the most important person in my life. You’ve taught me so much. And then you... You married me. Cookies really aren’t a fraction of that. Not even the beginning of some kind of repayment.”